Abstract

TRONCON, Luiz Ernesto de Almeida. Effectiveness of Medical Student Programmatic Assessment: A Case Study Based on Experiences of Students and Teachers from a British Medical School. Rev. Bras. Educ. Med. [online]. 2018, vol.42, n.3, pp.153-161. ISSN 1981-5271.  https://doi.org/10.1590/1981-52712018v42n2RB20170103.

Programmatic student assessment is a novel educational approach aiming at optimizing the utilization of different methods for better attaining the main functions of student assessment: summative, formative and assurance of curriculum effectiveness (quality control of educational activities). Introduction of a programme for student assessment in institutions devoted to higher education in the health sciences professions isa time and resource consuming enterprise, which should be rewarded with gains in assessment quality. However, information on this is scarce. Although a few studies have yield data on various systems for work-based assessment in different health professions, the effectiveness of programmatic assessment in undergraduate settings has not been much evaluated. We therefore aimed at exploring the perceptions of selected samples of students and teachers from a single British medical school where a programmatic assessment system was recently introduced. In this case study, medical students and faculty members agreed to undergo a semi-structured, anonymously recorded interview. Audio-files were transcribed into texts, which were submitted to content analysis for identifying strengths and areas for improvement related to the current student programmatic assessment system. Our results showed that, although expressing different perspectives and criticizing a few aspects, students and teachers shared a predominant positive view on the local system for programmatic assessment. Students valued most the wealth of opportunities to receive constructive feedback from supervisors in clinical years and the multiple formative and summative objective structured exams of clinical skills. Teachers valued most the overall assessment organization and effectiveness in detecting poor performing students and praised the many training opportunities for them to be trained to play different roles in assessment. These findings allowed us to conclude that medical student and faculty experiences on a recently introduced system for programmatic assessment are predominantly positive. These results may be taken as an indication that complexity and costs associated to implementing such systems may be rewarded by improvements in student assessment overall quality.

Keywords : Educational Measurement; Medical Student; Medical Faculty; Medical Education.

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